If you need to run the server on port 80 you should use a reverse proxy like nginx that will run using a system account on a privileged port and proxy the requests to your Node.js server running on an unprivileged port (> 1024).
When running in development environment you’re pretty much free to run as root (ie. sudo node server.js
), but that is rather dangerous in production environment.
Here’s a sample nginx config that will see if the request is for a file that exists in the filesystem, and if not, proxy the request to your Node.js server running on port 9000
upstream yournodeapp { server localhost:9000 fail_timeout=0; keepalive 60; } server { server_name localhost; listen 80 default_server; # Serve static assets from this folder root /home/user/project/public; location / { try_files $uri @yournodeapp; } location @yournodeapp { proxy_pass http://yournodeapp; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade; proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade"; } }